How well suited are you to start a franchise?

Here is a Top Ten of the most important considerations to franchising:

1. How supportive are your family and those closest to you, of your plans to start your own business?
2. How much consideration have you given to the financial impact of starting a new business?
3. How could a drop in household income for perhaps more than a year be managed?
4. How effectively can you deal with high pressure and stressful situations?
5. How open are you to receiving guidance and support, especially if it does not necessarily reflect your own views or opinions?
6. How flexible is your work mentality and can you apply focus to different jobs as may be required and multi-task effectively?
7. Do you usually have a positive mindset, and have plenty of drive, determination and perseverance?
8. How acceptant are you that self-employment, including franchising, often requires harder work and longer hours than employed positions?
9. How acceptant are you that a franchise does not bring a guarantee of success, but is more likely to be successful is you work hard and follow the proven business model that a franchisor provides?
10. Do you have a decisive mindset, and could you make the decision in the first place to step out of employment and into self-employment?

If you have answered positively to the questions above, whilst being true to yourself, then your mindset, personal skills and circumstances appear to be suited to starting a franchised venture of your own.

However, if some of your answers and not completely positive, then you should give serious consideration to your situation as to whether the negatives that have been highlighted can be made into positives.

Always try and detach emotion from decision making where such important and one-off decisions are required, and this will help you in making the right choices from the start.